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Fall 2013
A basic tenet of comparative studies of the brain is that the larger size of any neural structure is related to the need for progressing more complex or larger quantities of information, the so call Jerison's “principle of proper mass”. Base on this principle, variation of the absolute and...
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Fall 2014
With well over 3,400 described species, snakes undoubtedly represent one of the most successful groups of reptiles. Much has been written about their ecology, behavior, anatomy, relationships and evolution. However, despite the debate about the origin of this taxonomic group dating back to the...
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Fall 2018
A full understanding of the evolution of novel forms requires inference about their origins through the study of variation in extant taxa and clues from the fossil record. However, the origins of morphological diversity in many groups are obscured by the scarcity of transitional fossils or...
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Fall 2013
The phylogenetic relationships of the destructive spruce budworm group of forest pests (Choristoneura fumiferana species complex) have previously been explored using allozymes, microsatellites, mitochondrial genes and a nuclear gene, but remain poorly resolved with conflicting topologies. I used...
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Fall 2017
Leafrollers moths are one of the most ecologically and economically important groups of herbivorous insects. These Lepidoptera are an ideal model for exploring the drivers that modulate the processes of diversification over time. This thesis analyzes the evolution of Choristoneura Lederer, a well...
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Fall 2010
Epithelia form protective barriers and regulate molecule transport between the mesenchyme and environment. Amongst all metazoans, only sponges are said to lack 'true' epithelia however the physiology of sponge cell layers are rarely studied empirically. Aggregates and gemmules of a freshwater...
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Fall 2013
Ortiz Sandoval, Carolina Guadalupe
The ER mitochondria-associated membrane (MAM) is a hub for many calcium-mediated processes required for cell survival, including apoptosis, autophagy, and ATP production. In this thesis, we identified and characterized the interaction between MAM-enriched Rab32 and its effector Drp1, a master...
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Respiration, Acid/Base, Ammonia and Ionoregulatory Strategies in the Pacific hagfish (Eptatretus stoutii)
DownloadFall 2016
Hagfish feed on putrefied carrion, which poses several environmental challenges to the scavenger including hypoxia (Low PO2), hypercapnia (high PCO2) and high environmental ammonia (HEA). To any other organism, these conditions would be physiologically challenging; however, hagfish seem to have...
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Fall 2020
Dromaeosaurids were small to medium sized theropod dinosaurs that diversified during the Late Cretaceous, reaching a near cosmopolitan distribution. They were diverse in morphology from the small four-winged gliders of Microraptorinae, to the bear-sized giant ‘raptors’ like Achillobator or...
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The Evolutionary Ecology of Parasitic Strategies: Experimental Evolution with a Facultatively Ectoparasitic Mite
DownloadSpring 2019
Although parasitism is a ubiquitous lifestyle, little empirical evidence exists for how and why parasitism evolves from free-living lineages. Analysis of phylogenetic relationships among taxa that exhibit a range of lifestyles has aided in the development of a commonly proposed hypothesis for the...